


Supply-side Economics

by alp



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, F/M, Industrial Sabotage, Sexual Tension, Smut, Tumblr Prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-12
Updated: 2017-04-12
Packaged: 2018-10-17 22:17:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,538
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10603380
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alp/pseuds/alp
Summary: The trouble with spending most of her time with an intelligence officer was that she was constantly being read.Jyn and Cassian are sent to disrupt a supply line. They wind up falling into each other.





	

**Author's Note:**

> For Rebelcaptain Appreciation Week, Day Three: Undercover. 
> 
> The combat is straight-up Star Wars!silly. I'm foisting half the blame for that onto my husband, because he's the one who gave me the idea.
> 
> Anyway.

Jyn’s nerves buzz in time with the pulse of the manufactory.

She’s wearing a stolen pair of coveralls, slate grey, in the Imperial fashion. She’s hemmed the pant legs and sleeves, but it still hangs loose around her hips and shoulders. Her hair is neater than she usually bothers to make it, her bangs pinned up and back, tucked carefully away. The floor vibrates beneath her feet. The air is stagnant. It smells of grease and engine oil. 

She makes her way along the edge of the factory floor. Workers, both sentient and not, hunch over benches, conveyor belts; tinker with great, hulking machines. Overseers in crisp, olive uniforms, flanked by security droids, walk in the aisles between them. Pausing, now and again. Inspecting. Critiquing. Harassing. There are no Stormtroopers in sight, but she’d been twice-overed by them on her way in, so she’s sure they’re waiting in the wings. 

She’s without a blaster, without a truncheon. She tries not to think about what she’ll do if she draws the wrong kind of attention. 

At the back of the room, where one wall connects to the next, she can see the door to the office. They’ve told her to report there, and they’ve trusted her to it, for reasons she hasn’t the energy or inclination to question. Instead, she turns. To her left, men and women, of various species, assemble rifles alongside droids, the former peering through lenses, the latter telescoping their eyes. To her right, an overseer passes. He slows. She looks at him and doesn’t, keeps him in the peripheral, steadies her breathing. She has no plans to act, but her body responds as if she does. 

This is not the most dangerous thing she’s ever done. But she can’t help but note the fact that, the last time she went solo into an Imperial facility, it ended with her doing time in a labor camp. 

* * *

Four days prior, she stood over a cluttered table in a dark, cramped room, incense curling around her head, stinging her nostrils and clinging to the back of her throat. There were yellowing panels on the walls. Jammers in them, supposedly. Sarley, their man, tipped his head from one side to the other. 

“It’ll take a few days to line everything up,” he said, “but I can do it.” 

“Good.” Cassian’s lips were thin, pressed together. He was nervous. She had been learning his tells, and it turned out that he was nervous quite a bit, more than she would have guessed. She supposed it came with the territory. “And the building schematics?” 

Sarley made a full-body gesture that might have been a shrug. His tentacles swayed, curled, straightened. “I know a guy. Could make it a package deal.” 

There was a long pause. Jyn struggled to keep her mouth shut. It was a good thing they hadn’t been able to bring K-2 along; he wouldn’t have been able to. 

Cassian sighed. He reached for the pocket on the inside of his jacket. “How much?” 

Sarley smiled. 

An exchange of credits, a handful of hours, and a bite to eat later, she was sitting in their hotel room, on the edge of her bed, scrolling through docs on a datapad, listening to the staccato beat of the shower. She thought of the others -- Bodhi sinking into a squadron, Chirrut and Baze advising and supporting the infantry. Since Hoth had been compromised, she hadn’t seen much of them. It was strange to miss people. It had been a long time since she’d allowed herself to. 

The fresher went quiet. The door opened, and Cassian emerged, shirtless, toweling his hair, trousers riding low. His chest was slick, water and light accentuating the lines. Heat pooled in her belly. Her lips parted. She closed them and swallowed. 

“All yours,” he said. 

She doubted he intended it the way she took it. 

* * *

The Imperial clears his throat. She can hear the servos on a droid, whining as they turn, and then going quiet. Her steps are measured; she focuses on keeping them even. She is supposed to be here. She is supposed to be here, and she has some place that she needs to be. 

The Imperial moves on. She inhales. Exhales. 

The map, in her head, is a series of glowing yellow lines. Holograms are a good approximation, but reality is always a tad more complicated. There are structures, unaccounted for; people, moving objects. The necessity of suboptimal routes. She orients herself as best she can and, at a bend, heads toward the rear wall. 

There’s a stairwell, somewhere near. It leads to a space that she thinks of as a well. It’s there that the dedlanite gets passed into the system, before it’s heated, smelted, molded into parts. 

It’s there that she can toss a wrench. 

* * *

She lifted the mug to her lips and pretended to take a sip. Local custom dictated that patrons could stay at a table as long as they wished, so long as they were eating or drinking something. She wasn’t hungry, and the only decent drink on the menu was caf. She was starting to feel jittery. 

Some distance away, separated from the diner by a kilometer of winding streets and downward-sloping hill, lay a set of docks. Steam poured out from the underside of a cargo shuttle, billowed outward, wrapped around the legs of the marshallers, their suits and batons catching the sun. It slowly lifted off the ground, wings stretching upwards, and sped toward the sky. 

“Thirty-five to forty minutes.” Cassian was looking down at his chrono, tapping his fingers on the table. “That’s the window.” 

“Five minutes is a wide margin.” 

She thought she caught the ghost of a smile on his lips. “We won’t rely entirely on time. You know I come prepared.” 

Their knees knocked together. Neither one of them moved to break contact. He looked at her, and his eyes softened in a way that she’d noticed was reserved for her. She touched his hand. He slid his thumb over hers. It ran back, forth, back again, and her breath caught. 

“Well, then,” she said, “let’s light it up.” 

* * *

About a meter from the stairwell, a man stands with his back to her, peering down at a viewer. Beside him, on the edge of the surface, lays a datapad. He passes his hands over a pair of dials, types something into a keyboard. Elsewhere, there’s a screech, metal sliding against metal; the sound of an engine, its tone sonorous, rising. She slows, watches him for a moment. He turns, glances up and to the right, away from the door. 

She glides past him. Grabs the datapad. 

She’ll hardly be able to use it. Anything at all useful will be password protected or encrypted, and she has no desire to spend the time cracking it. But that, of course, isn’t the point. 

She reaches the top of the stairs and rounds a corner, finding herself on a raised walkway, overlooking a set of large, interconnected cylinders. The space is hot, hot enough that, almost instantly, she can feel sweat forming on her brow and along her hairline. The ceiling is lower here than it is on the assembly line; she can hear fans, industrial, recessed, hidden behind layers of rafters. The room is bright. Beneath the brightness is a separate glow, a glow that has a weight to it. 

She cradles the datapad in the crook of her elbow, looks from it to her surroundings and back again, tapping, tapping. An Imperial approaches. She stops. Wrinkles her nose at the pad. Shakes her head. 

He catches her eye as he nears. Her heart thumps. “I wasn’t aware there was an inspection today.” 

“It’s not formal,” she answers. She’s very aware of the scandocs in her side pocket. Sarley did an admirable job, constructing their identities, tying them to concrete backgrounds, getting them in. But the more people who see her false ID, the more chances there are to blow her cover. She hopes he won’t ask. “Boss wants us to start doing spot checks. Says it keeps people honest.” 

The Imperial blinks at her. The moment stretches, and her mouth dries, and her hands go clammy. Finally, he relaxes, nods. “I can see the sense in that.” He cocks his head. His eyes rove over her face. “And how is this...check going? It would appear as though you have some concerns.” 

She sighs and gestures to a piece of equipment along the wall, its varnish speckled and going green. “Might want to have a machinist take a look at that one. You’ve got corrosion setting in.” 

He furrows his brow and shifts his gaze. “It looks like normal wear to me, but I suppose it couldn’t hurt.” He nods at her again, huffs, chest puffing and deflating. “Very well. Carry on.” 

When she walks past him, she’s shaking with relief. 

* * *

“We don’t have to do it this way.” 

They were sitting beside one another, her legs folded under her, his hanging off the side of the bed. Off to one side, there lay a palm-sized projector. The holo of the manufactory schematics rotated above it. 

“I know.” 

“And it’ll only be temporary. They’ll have it back up in a few days.” 

He massaged his temple. “A few days is all we need. And you know our instructions.” 

Minimize civilian casualties. Saw wouldn’t have cared, would have ordered the whole place blown up if he thought he could get away with it. And the Cassian she’d first met, the one who’d taken her to Jehda, might not have cared, either. At the very least, he’d have tried to tell himself that he didn’t. 

Now, he cared plenty, instructions or no, and she knew it. She knew part of the reason why, too. The thought stirred a part of her that had laid dormant for years, that was slowly being coaxed back to life. 

“In that case…” She shifted, looked at the map. “It makes sense for me to be the one to go in.” 

“I’ve done it before.” 

“So have I.” She’d gotten caught in the end, granted, but that was neither here nor there. “You’ll be able to sneak a blaster onto the docks, but not into the factory, and if something goes wrong, I’m better at hand-to-hand combat than you.” 

He looked at her, jaw tight, eyes searching, then let out a breath and shook his head. “You’re right. I know you’re right.” His eyes crept back up to her face. “But it feels a little too much like leaving you.” 

Of course he’d have to go and say something like that. “Small operation. Not much choice.” She put her hand on his arm. “I’ll be fine.” 

He reached up, took a loose lock of her hair between his fingers. His knuckle brushed her cheek, and the touch sent a jolt rushing from the point of contact to her core. 

“Yes. You will be.” 

* * *

One of her possible targets sits at the far end of the walkway. It’s a chute, wide-mouthed, leading down into the cylinders, into piping, into rows of casts and molds. There’s a second stretch of walkway, perpendicular to hers, and down it she spies other chutes, some attended by workers with carts of raw dedlanite. They’re mostly droids. Depending on their programming, that could be either good or bad. There are single-minded droids; there are also observant ones. 

For some reason, she thinks K-2 would be offended by the distinction. 

She moves between two pieces of equipment and drops the datapad onto a sloping panel, leans over it, hopes it looks like she’s absorbed in it. With one hand, she reaches up and tugs on the zipper to her coveralls. It’s a reflex to seek out her kyber crystal. Anxiety spikes when she can’t find it, but then she recalls that it’s safe, in a locked compartment, back on the ship. She couldn’t risk them finding and taking it. She skips over the spot it usually occupies. Reaches into her breast band. Removes a bag. 

They’d been thorough, at the entrance. Not thorough enough. 

She straightens, peers around before turning. Settles the datapad onto her forearm, conceals the bag beneath it. The droids go about their business, focused wholly on emptying their carts. She moves to the chute, and while one hand taps and swipes, the other slowly rotates, and upends the bag. 

Plasteel swirls into the system. 

* * *

The night before was always rough. When she was younger, she’d thought it would get easier, that at some point, she’d cross a threshold and suddenly be “used to it.” She never had. Over time, it had become clear that it was exhaustion, rather than tolerance, that had fueled the easy sleep of the soldiers she’d grown up with. She wasn’t exhausted, tonight. Instead, she was a bundle of nerves. 

She lay back, stared up at the ceiling. Her leg was bent and shaking. The light was still on; Cassian was sitting up, his back to the headboard of his own bed, frowning over his datapad. 

“You all right?” 

She turned toward him. “Huh?” 

“You seem…” He put the pad aside. “...worried.” 

The trouble with spending most of her time with an intelligence officer was that she was constantly being read. She should have been annoyed. She wasn’t. She smirked at him. “You don’t feel a nerve or two before going in?” 

He paused, shrugged. “The job is what it is.” 

That meant he didn’t know that she could read him right back. She wanted to laugh. She rolled over, pushed herself up, swung her legs over the side of the bed. “For a spy, you can be awfully bad at lying, Andor.” 

He paused, then moved himself over and came to meet her. Their legs touched. It might have been the anticipation, the fact that she was poised on the edge of action, that she was captive to the slow seep of endorphins. It might have been the fact that it was _him_. Her bets were on the latter. Either way, she was flushed, and her hands were flexing around her comforter. 

“So what do you think?” He spread his hands, then brought them together and knit his fingers. “You think I’m nervous?” 

“Sure.” 

“Why?” 

She did laugh, then. “What, are you looking for tips?” 

“I might be.” 

She took a moment, considering. “You’re stiff. You’re tight at the shoulders. The lines around your eyes are deeper. And your lips are…” Her eyes followed and stilled her words. 

“What about them?” The tone of his voice made her stomach flip. 

She stared at him. She couldn’t do anything but stare at him. Bells were going off in her head. Warnings. Exaltations. 

When the silence had begun to grow too large and too long, he leaned forward, cupped her cheek, and kissed her. 

* * *

She hears footsteps, clanging against the walkway. A voice, familiar. 

“You, there!” She must not have been as convincing as it seemed. “Miss!” The hairs on the back of her neck rise. She itches to run, or to fight, or both, but she forces herself to keep a steady pace. Can’t confirm their suspicions. Not just yet. 

“Miss! Stop!” 

The footsteps speed up. He’s still walking, technically, but it’s at an urgent clip, just shy of a run. She hits the stairwell, and as soon as she’s out of his line of sight, she lets herself move. Her fist glides along the railing, her strides manifest gaps. She lands hard at the bottom. Her knees give, and her fingers bend to the floor, maintaining her balance and thrusting her forward. The crack of the door against the wall is an explosion. The slapping of her boots against the floor is blaster fire. The echo of the Imperial’s voice burns into her back. 

She can’t go out the front. She’ll get scooped up going out the front. 

She turns toward the wall opposite from where she entered, follows the curve of a workbench. If the schematics hold up, then there should be an alternate exit, halfway down a back corridor. She moves as fast as she dares, keeps her head low. 

Behind her, she hears shouts, curses. The dissonant grinding of gears. The din of the factory lets up, just a bit, and her chest swells. It’s already happening. She pictures the plasteel melting, coating the machinery, weakening the dedlanite. They’ll have to flush the system. They’ll have to scrub it. And scrub it. And scrub it. And even then, there will be parts that won’t come clean, and they’ll have to replace them, and they’ll scramble, but the damage will already have been done. Everything will have come to a halt. 

There are more footsteps, more voices. Heads swivel toward her. She ignores them, and shoulders her way through a door. 

* * *

His kiss wasn’t rough, exactly, but there was an insistence to it, a sense of coiled restraint, mirroring the way he approached all else. She breathed in. He’d tidied his beard earlier, and she could smell his shaving cream, clean and cool and spicy. Her hands wrapped around his wrists, dipped under his arms, touched his chest. Fisted in his shirt. Pulled. 

His hands fell away, and she felt the mattress give on either side of her. He moved forward; his leg came up, his thigh brushed against hers, his knee pressed into the surface of the bed, and she scooted backwards, tugging him along. He crawled up and over her like a Loth-cat. Her pulse raced. Her ears rang. All of her nervousness, all of her anxiety, was transforming, dropping into a warm ache, a tight ball of need. 

Weeks, months… She wasn’t sure when the longing had started. Might have been after Scarif, might have been during, might have been when she’d realized he was, in fact, different, might have been before that, even, despite the givens. She’d spent so long stuffing down everything that wasn’t either directly tied to her survival or somewhere along the spectrum of rage that it had taken her a stupid amount of time to recognize it. 

Well, no matter. 

She wanted him. She wanted him so badly that she could't think. 

His hair was soft. The rest of him was hard, and hot. He wedged his legs between hers, slid his hands up her arms, pinned them above her head. Sucked on the spot where her jaw met her neck and ear. She gasped, arched up, rolled her hips. He thrust against her. 

On the insides of her eyelids, she saw him wet and half-naked. She freed her arms and clawed at his shirt. 

* * *

Sirens wail. 

She tucks the datapad beneath her arm and snaps her gaze to a fixed point. Red lights strobe; shifting, sliding shadows form, the color of jaundice and blood. A handful of men and women dart past her. They don’t know. No face to look for, not yet. But there has to be an image or two now, entering security’s circulation. 

She doesn’t have much time. Even if, by some stroke of Force-guided luck, she encounters no one who realizes she’s out of place, it’s clear that they’re locking down the facility. She has minutes, if that, before her out will be as closely guarded as the main entrance. 

She thinks of Cassian. They’ll be locking down the docks, too. She hopes he’s finished his part and gotten away, that he’s either at or on his way to their rendezvous. Not only because she doesn’t want him trapped, but because she knows, in her gut, that if he’s anywhere near the manufactory, and he sees what’s happening, he’ll try to come after her. 

The knowledge makes her heart feel light and heavy at once. 

She counts rooms, side halls. _Four. Five. Six._ At a junction, she flattens herself against the wall, peers around the corner. The door is right where it should be. It’s bracketed by two troopers, looking fidgety, impatient. 

She fills her lungs, walks out into the open, and resists the urge to say, “waiting for me?” 

* * *

He crooked his fingers inside of her. She sucked air through her teeth, writhed, dug her nails into his shoulder. Gripped him and squeezed. Their eyes locked. His were dark, the pupils pushing back the irises, soldiers on the offensive. She grabbed his face. Looked him over. Took him in. 

Her skin begged for him. That was new. It wasn’t enough to feel just a little, just a part; she wanted him all over, closer. There was a hollow place in her that sang whenever and wherever he touched her, that loudly demanded she get more, more, more of him. He was a balm, a salve, lighting her flesh on fire and then soothing it, leaving it flushed and tingling. 

Cassian Andor was a damned treasure. She was probably going to have to keep him. 

She planted her hands on his chest and gave him a shove. He fell back, caught himself on his forearms. 

“What…” 

"You know exactly what.” 

She kissed him deeply, fiercely, anchored herself to him, and took for herself every available inch of his body. 

* * *

“Hey.” It’s the one on the left. His voice crackles. She wonders if it’s a feature or a bug that modulators make Stormtroopers all sound the same. “You’re not supposed to be here.” 

“Oh?” She passes the datapad from her arm to her hand. “My mistake.” She keeps moving forward. The troopers exchange a glance. 

One of them starts to lift his blaster. Hesitates. “I need you to turn…” 

She throws all of her weight, all of her strength, behind the blow. The datapad strikes him hard in the neck, at the space where helmet and body armor connect. It’s one of the more unorthodox tacts she’s taken, but she’s not one to question something if it works. He staggers. His partner steps into a defensive stance, readies his weapon, and she dodges behind the first, bracing herself against the wall when the blaster bolt connects and bowls him over. 

“Oh _shit_!” 

She surges toward the one still standing, raps his knuckles. His rifle falls. She collects it and points it at him. 

There’s a keypad and a card slot beside her exit. _The facility is locking down._

“Is the door locked?” 

His hands are up, and he’s not moving, but it’s obvious that he’s pissed. “You’re damn right it is.” 

“Open it.” 

She suspects he’d spit, if it weren’t for the helmet. “Kriff you.” 

The butt of the rifle connects with the side of his head. He stumbles, catching himself on the wall, and she sweeps in and hits him again, on the backs of his knees. He palms the floor and shakes his head. 

“ _Open it._ ” 

There’s a long pause. The braying of the klaxon is low and harsh. Her muscles ache with stress. She doesn’t think she can hear anyone else coming, but they might be. They might. They probably are. 

The trooper reaches up to the keypad. 

* * *

She was on her back again, one of her legs hooked over his arm. Bucking up, being driven down. She clutched his shoulder blades. The comforter bunched around her opposite heel. 

She didn’t say people’s names, while in the throes. Felt too intimate, for a thing that was a means to an end. 

She said his. 

It collapsed on the last syllable, became a throaty whimper. 

He snaked his arm under hers. Slid it up, around her upper back and neck, and his fingers threaded through her hair. Her bun came loose. She dropped her leg. Her hands moved down, to his waist, up a bit, to the curve of his ribcage, encircled him, held him tight, and then tighter. She challenged his thrusts. His tongue was between her teeth, and on it lay the shape of her moans. 

* * *

She finds him on the edge of the park. He’s leaning against a pillar, feet crossed at the ankles, thumbs hooked over his belt. From a distance, his posture appears casual, but she can tell, from the curve of his lips and the cant of his brow, that he’s tense. 

It changes, when he sees her. His body opens up. The hard edges that define him run smooth. 

She’s no longer in the coveralls; she’d hidden a change of clothes near the facility. He’s changed, himself. She appraises him. His face gleams with sweat, but otherwise, he looks no worse for wear. The tension she’d been carrying, at the base of her neck and spine, mirror and twin to his, leeches out of her. 

She is so, so glad to see him. 

“I was starting to get nervous,” he says. 

“Are we acknowledging that, now?” 

He gives her a look that makes her want to kiss him. “Come on.” 

They’ve already checked out of the hotel, so they follow the streets that will lead them back to their ship, purposely taking their time. There’s a market along the way. They linger at its booths, feigning interest. Jyn picks up a specialty fabric and runs it between her thumb and forefinger. It’s very fine, and very pleasing, and it’s also, as far as she can tell, a colossal waste of credits. 

Cassian wraps his arm around her midsection. She floods with heat. 

“It shouldn’t be much longer.” 

* * *

She convulsed. Her hands smacked against the bed. Her thighs were squeezing his, and her core was molten, and she was biting down hard on his bottom lip. Her mouth curled around the taste of copper. 

She wasn’t sure this was normal. She wasn’t even sure what normal _was_. She didn’t care. Or, more accurately, she wasn’t anywhere near a frame of mind capable of caring. Any halfway coherent thought that tried to form crashed up against a single, all-consuming word, then shattered and fell away. 

_Cassian._

She said it again. He replied. Her name never sounded so sweet. 

He peaked not long after her, movements edging toward chaos, eyes going wide. She ran one hand up his chest, grabbed his hair with the other, and thrilled at the change in his expression. 

She wanted to see that change again. She wanted to see it every single day for the rest of her life. 

* * *

The first one goes when they reach the edge of the market. It’s a flash of light, out of the corner of her eye, a blemish in an otherwise pristine sky, small but expanding. It’s contained, in its own way. Close enough to see, planetside; far enough away that any debris will burn up in the atmosphere. 

They stop and look up. Her shoulder is against his chest. His hand is on her lower back. They’re something, now. She isn’t sure what, but it’s something, and she thinks that she likes it. There hasn’t been much in her life worth liking. 

“How many did you manage?” 

“Six,” he answers. 

Six cargo shuttles. Six charges. Timed, but also tethered. Run out the chrono, or get out of signal range. Doomed, either way. 

No civilians. Not a single one. 

Another light blossoms, and then another, and another. She reaches for his hand. 

“Let’s go home.”


End file.
